Otto Klein
Frank Otto Klein (November 21, 1921—), Biography Frank Otto Klein was born in Milwaukee during a blindingsnowstorm on November 21, 1921. His immigrant Austrian-Hungarian parents had arrived in the United States only weeks earlier and could not speak English. Otto, as he was known to his schoolmates, attended Aetna Park grade school (later rebuilt as Jefferson) in Wauwatosa from kindergarten through the third grade, from 1926 to 1930. In his later years, he delighted in telling people he had "flunked" a year in his schooling — kindergarten — because he spoke only German. He attended St. Bernard School for the fourth and fifth grades, 1930-1932. "In these first seven school (five plus two of years kindergarten), I had lived about two-thirds of the way up the rather steeply inclined 68th Street, north of State Street," Klein writes. "I cannot forget my dad's cars, which were Model A and Model T Fords, and I remember a Pierce Arrow, as well. I will never forget my dad laboring to manually crank the cars to start them, particularly in the cold of winter. I also remember our first new car an Oldsmobile for $600! I think the name of the automobile dealer from whom my dad bought it was Andy Renner (then at 68th Street and Milwaukee Avenue)." "My dad was a barber who worked almost tirelessly from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. six days a week most of his life." His "Frank Klein's Barber Shop" was well known in Tosa, having been in three locations in the Village central for about forty years, commencing in 1922. I well remember the respect he had from his many customers, among whom were a score of my fellow students and teachers.'' "We had a single-family home on the west side of the street with attic, cellar, kitchen, dining room, living room, two bedrooms and a single bath, for which my dad paid $25 a month rent. All the rooms were very small, and the small backyard dropped abruptly and steeply behind the one-car garage into a small forest. Here I climbed trees and played Tarzan. ...In that forest, I remember finding Indian arrowheads and recall having been told there was an Indian burial site within the forest, but I never found evidence of it. "Across the street, but several houses south, was a stone quarry that reached nigh onto State Street. Just to the north of the quarry was a home in the possession of a disabled Civil War veteran. He was always in a wheelchair and was cared for by his younger and ambulatory wife. When I was about 10 years old, I recall the unique experience of my brother Oscar and I having been invited to visit in the home of this Civil War veteran." Klein's Tosa schooling was interrupted for 1½ years when his parents placed him and his younger brother, Oscar Bruno, in a Catholic boarding school in Vienna, Austria, to help maintain their German language ability. This short European stay proved to be an unforgettable historical period he remembers well. Upon Klein's return to the U.S., he attended St. John's in Milwaukee for seventh grade, and Longfellow Junior High School in Wauwatosa for eighth and ninth grades. At graduation in 1937, he was awarded the Livingston Trophy. The trophy was particularly prized because it was won through the vote of the entire junior high school student body for the most popular of teacher-nominated outstanding students. "It was while I was in junior high school that my dad and mother had divorced, and that my dad remarried the widowed Susan Shrader. I gained a devoted and loyal stepsister, Joan, about 8½ years younger than I. we resided at Stickney 8330 Ave until my graduation from high school. While I was in high school, my mother returned to Europe to help attend her dying mother." Klein's Tosa schooling was concluded in 1940 at Wauwatosa High School, where he graduated with scholastic honors and vice president of his senior class. These school years in Wauwatosa coincided with the years of the U.S. and worldwide Great Depression. Klein's award of a Wisconsin State Championship in "Serious Declamation" while in his junior year at Tosa High School prompted him to seek a theatrical career in New York City. He landed a character actor role on CBS's weekly Campbell's Playhouse, on programs with rising Hollywood stars Lon McAllister and Burgess Meredith. World War II interrupted his career. Following Pearl Harbor, Klein enlisted and was inducted as a private in the Army Air Force. He passed tests to become an Aviation Cadet and, while in training at the Aviation Cadet Preflight Training Base at Santa Ana, California, met Jane Wills, whom he married on Valentine's Day 1944. About six months before this marriage, upon graduation as a Navigator 2nd Lieutenant, he was assigned to the 2nd Photo-Charting Squadron at Bolling Field in Washington, D.C., where he had the unique assignment of helping map the remaining photographically uncharted regions of the continental U.S. this was preformed in a B-17 Flying Fortress, and Klein treasures the memory of this duty assignment. Klein's marriage was followed by a short tour to an aerial gunnery school in Texas and to an electronics school in Florida. In addition to his primary training as a navigator, radar operator and aerial gunner. Near the end of his military career, he was also a graduate of the U.S. Air War College. In the fall of 1944 he was assigned to the Far East Air Forces Command as a photo-reconnaissance and photo-mapping navigator on B-24 Liberator aircraft. There he served 40 combat missions over New Guinea, the Celebes, the Halmaheras, Borneo and the Philippines for the remainder of WWII. The correction of charts and mapping of uncharted areas in that region of the world serve as a legacy of his wartime activity. Following a serious case of jaundice contracted upon his departure from the Philippines in a Liberty ship in July 1945, and after a long stay at an Army hospital in Long Beach, California, he was assigned as an instructor at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas. An opportunity arose in early 1946 to be assigned to a B-29 Super Fortress unit, to be based in Germany. Since a number of Klein's close relatives were in West Germany and elsewhere in the Balkans, he applied and achieved the unit's assignment. Imagine Klein's dismay when the U.S. State Department's political considerations prompted the Pentagon to reassign the unit's destination Fairbanks, Alaska! It was there, however, that remarkable career events for Klein took place. In Alaska, Klein was a member of General Curtis Le May's Strategic Air Command in the 46th/72nd Photo Reconnaissance Squadron (VLR). The squadron was assigned top secret missions, collectively known as "Project Nanook," flying over the entire Arctic. The very earliest long-range aerial spy missions occurred at this time, by this unit. Most missions were 20 to 30 hours in length, and all demanded constant, concentrated professional activity on the part of the navigators. On one project, Klein had a primary directing, as well as participating, role in mapping of the islands of the Canadian Archipelago north of the Canadian mainland. "Project Polaris" resulted in significant map changes of the area. Klein delighted in telling family members that he was the very first to see a number of sights that would require map revisions. For instance, Bathurst Island, somewhat central in the Archipelago, was depicted as one island and was, in fact, a multitude of islands. "I was impressed by the many famous leaders, explorers and military generals of the day who felt compelled to visit and sometimes even worked with squadron members. There was Charles Lindbergh, who had been a boyhood idol of mine. He appeared so reserved and unassuming. He was working on aircraft fuel consumption problems, and the very long flights conducted by our squadron aircraft provided much data for his studies. There was Sir Hubert Wilkins, a British explorer who had been knighted by the Queen for his work on the Arctic expeditions in the early part of the 20th century. He now studied Arctic survival techniques and taught these to our squadron flying personnel. There was general of the Armies, Dwight D. 'Ike' Eisenhower, who impressed me with his fresh and healthful look and the manner in which he could put junior personnel at ease. There was Dr. Paul A. Siple, a War Department Research Plans Scientist and mathematician, as well as geographer, who had been to Antarctica with Admiral Byrd as a young Eagle Scout. Siple had developed simple formulas for establishing skin temperature under varying conditions of weather. ...Another memorable figure was four-star General Curtis Le May, who wished to have an intimate knowledge of our aerial activities." A highlight of Klein's Arctic achievements was a study he undertook at his own initiative, where he discovered the location of the Magnetic North Pole and reported a number of associated "local" magnetic poles. For this — 50 years later, when the studies finally were declassified — he was awarded the U.S. Air Force's prestigious Legion of Merit for his "exemplary ability, diligence and devotion to duty" and his "superior initiative, outstanding leadership and personal endeavor." Klein's superiors had told him not to rely on compasses when navigating in the Arctic because the Magnetic North Pole played havoc with directional determinations. But Klein had discovered that his compass worked over large areas where it supposedly should not have. Using his own compass measurements and analyzing data from other crews' flights, Klein discovered that the pole was nearly 200 miles north from where maps and accounts of earlier explorers placed it. He also discovered two secondary magnetic poles and found the poles were moving northward, rather than being stationary. His discoveries provided vital to navigation in the Arctic during the early stage of the Cold War. Klein was also awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for his help in locating a lost crew on northern Greenland, who has originally reported themselves going down over Siberia. (Klein's military decorations include several Air Medals, Outstanding Unit Awards and a bevy of subordinate medals and ribbons.) In the 1950s, Klein attended Long Beach City College and UCLA. He had majors in physics, math and geography. In his later military years, Klein served as an Intelligence Analyst at NATO headquarters in Paris, at EUCOM Headquarters, initially at St. German-En-Laye near Paris and later at Stuttgart, and at USAFE Headquarters in Wiesbaden, the latter two in West Germany. Klein's 40 years of government-associated services were a mixture of military and civilian activities. In the civilian activities, he worked for the Rand Corporation, a think tank for the USAF, and for the System Development Corporation, which was engaged in the development of large-scale information systems for the USAF. Here he supervised a large staff of academic professionals, some at the Ph.D level. As a civilian in Europe, he worked as an Air Defense Consultant to Denmark, Norway and West Germany. While in Germany in 1978, the President of (then) West Germany, Walter Scheel, awarded him the prestigious Service Cross 1st Class of Meritorious Service Awards of the Federal Republic of Germany for his consultant services to its air force. This was an exceptional award to a foreign citizen. Klein retired from the military as a USAF colonel in 1981. In civilian retirement, he was a Public Safety Commissioner Chairman for the city of Temecula in southern California in the 1990s. He and his wife moved to Sierra Vista, Arizona, in April 2002. He currently serves as President of the Cochise County Chapter is the Air Force Association in Arizona. Klein's eldest daughter, Nita Maria Byrd, was born overseas during WWII and is married and a grandmother. His only son and namesake is a PhD educator in an American high school in Switzerland; his son's two daughters attend college in the U.S. Cynthia Klein-Wilson, Klein's youngest daughter, is a retired FBI special agent. Category:1921 births Category:Persons of Note Category:Wauwatosa East Alumni Category:Actors Category:World War II veterans Category:NATO officials